Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[Raghar]

Name some recent 4X strats with those features. Most just shove planets in a population limit and malus from gravity or toxicity.

MOO, MOO2, MOO3. SD1, SD2. Stars. Also that game with massive number of stars and fleets, I think had it also more complicated.

 

[Destroid]

I really like the idea of MoO3s habitat plane mapping temperature and gravity, bottom right.

 

[Space Satan]

First dev diary is up:

Hi everyone!

Today, we will kick off a series of weekly dev diaries for our new game, Stellaris. We intend to keep feeding you with more information every week until release! This will be a while, but hopefully we won't have to resort to interns sharing their opinions on beekeeping or new snazzy shoes... Anyway, in this first entry, I thought I'd simply give you some background on the project and the vision I have for Stellaris.

So, how come we decided to make a space game of all things? Well, the idea has been kicking around the office ever since Europa Universalis II was released (we ended up making Hearts of Iron instead.) Ah, those were the days... Now, as you may know, our ambition is to eventually cover the entire "human timeline" with our games... including the future. So, in essence, making a space game is both something that has had a lot of support internally among the developers (seeking freedom from the shackles of history) and that many of you, our faithful players, have requested over the years. When the decision to make a space game was finally made by the powers that be, I wrote two different design outlines, and the one that would eventually become Stellaris was chosen (no, I will not tell you what the other one was!)

The vision statement the for Stellaris is: "The galaxy is ancient and full of wonders." That sounds pretty vague eh? However, I think it captures the spirit of what we are trying to do, when you recall the type of games we make at PDS... I want to make Stellaris the most replayable of all of our games (which, granted, is a pretty tall order!) The galaxy should always be unknown and surprising. That is why there are no "major races" in the game, and such a great variety of discoveries you can make. In the same vein, there is no fixed technology tree - but more on that later.

Stellaris diverges from all of our other games in certain key respects:

• It is not historical.
• It features a symmetrical start.
• You start out small.
• Most of the world is unknown.

The last three points happen to be defining features of "4X" games, so - although I somewhat dislike the term - Stellaris is in many ways a 4X game; a pretty crowded niche these days. However, we are not trying to recreate classics like Master of Orion. Stellaris is quite a new and different beast, but the symmetrical, small start offers two great advantages: The game can appear deceptively simple for new players. I.e. it can have a much smoother learning curve than our infamously hard-to-learn historical games. Secondly, it allows us to focus on the first X; eXploration, which I personally feel has always been the most neglected one.

The early game is thus characterized by exploration and discovering the wonders of the galaxy. We have put a lot of effort into making this part of the game feel fresh and unique every time you play. Then you start coming into contact with rival space-faring races and soon you reach the mid game, when there is not much left to colonize and your easy expansion grinds to a halt. At this point, the map stabilizes into the Stellaris equivalent of the world map in Europa Universalis, and the stage is set for a classic Paradox Grand Strategy experience...

Next Week: The Art Direction!

 

[Norfleet]

A: When you create your species, you get to pick the planet class of your homeworld (Desert, Ocean, etc). This then becomes the preferred habitat of your species. We do model this in the game... so if you come from a desert homeworld, members of your species won't be super excited to live on an ocean planet.
Q: how aboout several species on a single planet?
A: Some would like it and some wouldn't, depending on their homeworld type and the planet they were on.

You know, I want to see something other than Single Biome Planets. I mean, what kind of planet is the Earth? Merely calling it "Earthlike" is vague and meaningless. We don't have just ONE place to live. We don't even actually even find most of the planet habitable.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"earthlike" is obviously a balanced planet. mars could be "arid" because it could theoretically be terraformed with little effort and has some water of its own. a small, little-to-no-atmosphere, low gravity planet is better for production because of the lower stress on machinery and ease of sending ships in orbit...

i hope stellaris has a pre-warp start, i really loved the first phases in "distant worlds".

 

[Space Satan]

I doubt there will be pre-spacefaring start but they said there will be pre-space civs with which you could interact in various ways.

 

[Norfleet]

"earthlike" is obviously a balanced planet.

Which is, again, vague, because it implies "Earthlike" is a singular biome again. Like the above talks about "Desert" homeworld...so, what, their entire planet is one big desert? They have no other biomes? Maybe they would like it quite nicely in the middle of the Sahara Desert, then...a place where we don't like. Because the Earth isn't just a singular Earthlike biome, it has downright shitty places we don't want to live. Yet we cannot simply just "terraform" these places away without causing wholesale ecological disruption that would mess up the rest of the planet. Since basic geophysics sort of suggests that a life-bearing planet is unlikely to consist of a single biome, it stands to reason that even on a race's own homeworld, there are places that it just doesn't want to live, and those places might be perfectly habitable to alien populations that end up added to their empire. A planet could very well be "Earthlike", yet have a completely different distribution of said biomes that make it more or less palatable to humans or others. It may also be exactly like ours, except that it's still uninhabitable because it's full of things we can't eat, nor we can we feasibly get rid of without causing an ecological disaster on said planet.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Why not just see it as an abstraction representing the most prevalent biomes of a planet? That is to say, a 'Desert' planet might have other biomes, but deserts are prevalent.

 

[Space Satan]

Why not just see it as an abstraction representing the most prevalent biomes of a planet? That is to say, a 'Desert' planet might have other biomes, but deserts are prevalent.

Welcome to the Master of Orion 3 regions system and "fuck it, I'm done with this shit" micromanagement.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Which is, again, vague, because it implies "Earthlike" is a singular biome again. Like the above talks about "Desert" homeworld...so, what, their entire planet is one big desert? They have no other biomes? Maybe they would like it quite nicely in the middle of the Sahara Desert, then...a place where we don't like. Because the Earth isn't just a singular Earthlike biome, it has downright shitty places we don't want to live. Yet we cannot simply just "terraform" these places away without causing wholesale ecological disruption that would mess up the rest of the planet. Since basic geophysics sort of suggests that a life-bearing planet is unlikely to consist of a single biome, it stands to reason that even on a race's own homeworld, there are places that it just doesn't want to live, and those places might be perfectly habitable to alien populations that end up added to their empire. A planet could very well be "Earthlike", yet have a completely different distribution of said biomes that make it more or less palatable to humans or others. It may also be exactly like ours, except that it's still uninhabitable because it's full of things we can't eat, nor we can we feasibly get rid of without causing an ecological disaster on said planet.

mercury has exactly ONE biome.
same for venus.
same for jupiter.
same for saturn.

 

[Destroid]

Although it's keeping the original planetary scale classification for biomes, the new MoO looks like it is using a scaled resource production system where each planet has a number of slots per resource type (food, production, science) of varying worth and you fill the high value ones first. Represents occupying the good farming/mining etc. locations first well enough.

 

[Norfleet]

mercury has exactly ONE biome.
same for venus.
same for jupiter.
same for saturn.

Coincidentally, none of those planets are life-bearing. Can't imagine why.

Why not just see it as an abstraction representing the most prevalent biomes of a planet? That is to say, a 'Desert' planet might have other biomes, but deserts are prevalent.

Maybe, but the abstraction breaks down a bit when you have the potential to have colonists of multiple different races, each of which has their own different environmental preference, and those marginal, minority biomes that might be otherwise useless suddenly become ideal habitats for them even when the rest of the planet isn't. If you have an Earthlike planet, maybe some 80% of the planet is uninhabitable by humans without the use more advanced tech than we presently have, but if you also own fishpeople, those uninhabitable ocean biomes are now habitable.

 

[Destroid]

Ok, so what we need is to project a series of 3d surface maps representing each alien species compatibility as pressure, temperature and atmospheric composition onto a spherical map of the conditions present on the planet.

 

[WhiteGuts]

I'll also need them to represent the exact level of salt present in the different oceans of the planet.

 

[Norfleet]

Ok, so what we need is to project a series of 3d surface maps representing each alien species compatibility as pressure, temperature and atmospheric composition onto a spherical map of the conditions present on the planet.

Would certainly be interesting if a game did something like this: Planets are big things, not tiny islands that you build a few buildings on and that's it. It could certainly be possible for multiple parties to build their own colonies on a planet, like frequently could happen in EFS, setting the stage for ground conflicts in the future.

 

[Jason Liang]

Actually one of my favorite 4Xs is a pretty simple one called Spaceward Ho! 4.0 It was pretty much my introduction to the genre

In Spaceward Ho! You could terraform climate to match your homeworld (eventually... and very very cost prohibitive to terraform something -100C or +200C) which would allow for the planet to reach it's population potential for your race... BUT you could never terraform the Gravity. So no matter how wonderful the planet was, if it was over 2.0 G or under .4 G, that planet was junk for anything except mine and dump and maybe as a military base. Even planets within those constraints but close to the margins will never become population centers. So finding a planet around .9-1.2 G was awesome. The first one you find (and it might take 20 or more planets to find) essentially doubles your total population. Most planets are junk and those jewels are worth defending with everything.

At some level I think this game needs to find the right balance between micro and macro. Perhaps Spaceward Ho! is too macro, and perhaps the perfect fit is slightly more micro than Star Control 2. Yeah it would be awesome for each planet to have it's own map that you could look up. But don't make me build cities on each planet of a galactic empire. I don't need to be playing endgame Alpha Centauri X 100.

 

[Red Eye]

Second dev diary out

You can of course be a mind controlling parasite which has farmed a slave race to do your bidding, which we do have, but those are not in the majority.

Also no Pluto

 

[Space Satan]

Hello Everyone!

Today we will talk for a bit about the thought behind the artistic choices we’ve made in creating Stellaris. I will briefly touch on several subjects; spaceships, alien designs and environments. The vision for Stellaris puts a large emphasis on exploration and the fantastic things you can find out there in the vastness of space. With the art we wanted it to complement this wherever possible.

Establishing the art style we of course rummaged through all the Sci-fi imagery we could think of, from classical Sci-fi like Ralph McQuarrie and Star Trek, to the latest productions like Mass Effect or Halo.

A theme that soon emerged in the references we liked, that we felt reinforced our vision the best, was images with high contrast, and strong colors. Like an amusement park at night, or a city at sunset, very visible in last week's dev diary image. Or the image above. The dark areas generally have an air of mystery, and the strong light and saturated colors give a sense of wonder about the whole thing, which is exactly what we are aiming for. We felt that this would hopefully evoke a sense of awe in the player, and an urge to explore and seek out the mysteries of our galaxy.

Among the many images we collected, an artist we in particular liked was Kentaro Kanamoto, the style in many of his images very much had the feeling we wanted to convey. So we contacted him and had him create 10 different images which covered the various themes in the game, such as colonization, alien cities and planets, space combat, resource extraction etc. These would work well as a guiding star for art reference, as well as inspiration for the team in general. Any new artist on the team, or a member of management could look at these images and feel the type of game we wanted to make.


Though we embraced the darkness of space and a galaxy full of fallen empires, we did not want sadness. And though we very much wanted realism, we wanted to avoid gritty and dirty Sci-fi. So much of game art recently has achieved realism and detail by adding dirt and damage to everything, and in general it does a good job, but this worn down style was not what we were aiming for. We wanted detailed and realistic, to have a large sense of scale, but without resorting these tricks.

Clean art can be really hard to make since it easily ends up looking like plastic toys. This was one of the things I very much wanted to avoid, I did not want it to end up looking like toy armies in space. One of the things that really helped out here was us adding PBR to our engine. (Physically Based Rendering, all the cool kids are using it!) This was implemented in Runemaster, and with this we were able to get more detailed and realistic looking ships by having a large range of material properties to the surface, it adds a lot of detail, and it helps keep ships from having too much of a plastic feeling.

Another artistic decision that deeply affected the visuals of the ship designs was the choice of having visible turrets on the ship. Since we want them to be visible to the player if they are zoomed out a bit, they also have to be a fairly large, and mainly placed on the top of the ship. The turrets aim towards their target and gives a satisfying broadside at times.

But the decision was not primarily an artistic one, the combat is not just some pretty light show while the game crunches numbers in the background. The lasers and missiles you see are the same ones the game uses to determine the outcome of the battle. So if a laser misses its target, you can see that it goes past it, and the last missile to hit, really was the one that landed the final blow.

Even though we wanted realism, the world and the environmental objects are more of a stylized realism most space games go for. Scale and distance between objects is quite a ways off, adapted to a reasonable size as the scale and distances of real world space objects are so absurd. We also don't have planets moving around the sun. But we do keep it realistic wherever possible, with different star types being fairly accurate. Different planet types that makes sense. Frozen planet at the edge of the system etc.

Here is an example of the Sol system, and though it’s got a little bit more planets than most systems, systems being randomly generated and all, it does give you an idea of what solar systems may look like.

For the alien creature designs we aim fairly high in terms of scope. We wanted as much variety as possible, and for the player to find many new aliens each new session they played. We have tried to make them as varied as possible, but there are of course some constraints. For instance, they all are sentient creatures who in the end were able to one way or another develop tools, technology and finally spaceships. So they probably have some sort of extremities with which to grab items, be it tentacles or fingers, but it is rather hard to get around this of you want to escape your planet. You can of course be a mind controlling parasite which has farmed a slave race to do your bidding, which we do have, but those are not in the majority.

Another constraint was that we do need the races to participate in diplomacy, and have leaders and populations, so they did need to fit a certain format. That said we have done our utmost to avoid the Star Trek of just having different foreheads.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

I like the art so far.

I hope they can live op to the "The aliens are weird and look weird" part of there ideas.

 

[potatojohn]

I really like the idea of MoO3s habitat plane mapping temperature and gravity, bottom right.

Is this a mod, or a mockup?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Really enjoying their updates and the general direction of the game. If only I wasn't sure they were going to milk this shit with dozens of pointless dlc, I would buy it at release day.

 

[Destroid]

Is this a mod, or a mockup?

It's been so long I don't remember, isn't that normal MoO3?

 

[Raghar]

Is this a mod, or a mockup?

Looks like it's from game.

 

[potatojohn]

It's been so long I don't remember, isn't that normal MoO3?

MOO3 only ran in 800x600

 

[Space Satan]

• Only single-sun systems for now. I would like to see binary systems in the game some day, but it would require some work on how the orbits of their planets are handled.
• This game isn't as character-driven as CK2, so you won't see as many of them here. The numbers are probably closer to Distant Worlds, but having an admiral for each of your fleets shouldn't be a problem unless you create a zillion of them for some reason.
  Leaders have lifespans, which will depend on their species, and you can have leaders from several different species within your empire, where it makes sense (their species can actually be found within your empire, a special event, etc).
  If you want, you can of course also go down the Galactic Empire-route and restrict leadership roles to your own species.
• Currently each gun chooses its own target, depending on whats in range and optimal for its damage. As for the entire fleet, might not be in range of the same target. Also it would look sort of boring and unrealistic if the entire fleet was focus firing at one target at a time.
• If the shield is to close to the ship, it can be hard to tell if the laser hit the ship or not. Hear you can easily see that the laser was stopped, because of the gap between the shield and the ship.
• Each class of alien has an appearance, so mammalien has one, arthropoids another.The each modules within a race has a unique appearance within this style.
• Barnard's Star and Sirius are generated near sol system, the and some other, the rest of the galaxy is randomly generated.The game supports having both prescripted thing and randomization at the same time.
• we want as much illustrations as we can fit into the game, it helps a lot with immesion. But UI and mechanics has to come first.
• We will have a number of ways of seeing the planet surface, beyond what you see from space. Nothing super fancy, but hopefully something to get your immersion going.
• A lot of effort has gone into the 3d, because we want so much diversity. But we have not exactly been lacy on the illustrations side either.
• The size of the stars are very easily modded. I completely agree about the size of stars. We do have different sizes on the stars, roughly corresponding to the actual classes of stars. And this is something we haven't fully solved yet.
  The thing about large stars are, if they are bigger, for the ships not to pass through them when flying, they either have to be far above them. At which point the ships looks really weird in respect to all the other planets. Or, you have to code something for the ships to avoid the sun, for which there are many solutions. Though all of them are relatively time consuming.
  Right now we are focusing on gameplay, so it something we hopefully will have time to revisit before release.